Class Pet
by LadyDivine91
Summary: Kurt comes home from a week in Milan to find a very suspicious Blaine and Tracy purposefully avoiding a large, duct taped mess on the kitchen wall. Klaine. Kurt H. Blaine A.


"Uh, Blaine … what is this?" Kurt asks, sighing as he, exhausted from a week's worth of traveling, turns the corner from the dining room into the kitchen and sees the wall – the same wall he spent days priming, painting, sponging, and detailing in complementary shades of royal blue, primrose, and gold, covered in strips of unsightly duct tape. No – thick, black, Gorilla tape. Tape that advertises being water-proof, weatherproof, age proof, and basically able to withstand an apocalypse of Biblical proportions. When that tape comes off his wall, it's going to take most of the paint with it, straight down to the drywall. He's sure of it.

This is not what he needed to see five minutes after finally bidding adieu to planes, Ubers, busy restaurants, and uncomfortable hotel rooms.

"What's what, love?" Blaine answers as he peeks in from the hallway, having grabbed Kurt's luggage at the door and squirreling it inside with excessive speed, which struck Kurt as odd seeing as they haven't seen one another for days. Kurt expected a long, slow kiss at the door, maybe even some PG-rated groping. And the tone of Blaine's voice, the question he asked – Kurt isn't fooled for one second.

Blaine knows _exactly_ what Kurt is talking about.

"Yeah – what's what, Papa?" Tracy blinks big brown eyes in a way-too-innocent fashion for their precocious ten-year-old.

 _'Oh no,'_ Kurt thinks, his shoulders beginning to slump. _'Whatever this is, she's in on it.'_

Next time he goes on a week-long trip to Milan for Fashion Week, the two of them are coming with him. He doesn't care if Tracy does have midterms or what Broadway musical Blaine happens to be starring in.

He's not leaving these two alone ever again.

Kurt pulls out a chair at the kitchen table and sits in it, putting his back to the heartbreaking mess. "Guys, it's been a long couple of days for me, so can we skip to the end where the two of you fess up and tell me what happened so I can get to the business of repairing my paint job?"

"Uh …" Tracy looks from Kurt to Blaine, honest-to-goodness fear in her eyes, and Kurt begins to worry. What in the world could have happened while he was away? Was she riding her scooter inside after he specifically told her not to and put a hole in the wall? Then did she try to cover it with Gorilla tape in an attempt to hide what she'd done? It did sound plausible, but Tracy is more cunning, more meticulous than to try and cover up such a huge gaffe as the one Kurt has his back to so sloppily, especially since, if Kurt saw correctly, there's also a _Tupperware container_ taped to the wall. Knowing Tracy, she'd try to fix the wall – research a DIY on her tablet and attempt to repair it from the drywall up. But that's not what happened here.

No. Whatever this was, it was done in _haste_.

With his husband and daughter reluctant to give up any answers, Kurt glances around, trying to determine if anything seems out of place. His eyes fall on a glass fish tank in the corner – the tank that holds Tracy's class pet – and even though he can't see from this distance or this angle if the creature is actually in it, he knows it's not.

"Where's Avox?" he asks, putting his hands over his eyes, knowing he's not going to like the answer. He hears Blaine sigh, a peculiar mixture of relief (since Kurt obviously figured out the source of the dilemma without Blaine outright having to own up to it) and anxiety. _But what's there to be anxious about?_ Kurt quips to himself. _We just have a scorpion taped to our wall. No big deal._ As soon as Blaine tells Kurt what this is all about, he'll free the poor boy and put him back in his tank. Kurt was, for some reason, less perturbed by Avox than the rest of his family, though, he had to admit, he was happy Tracy's class only had the one creepy critter.

More than that would have given him nightmares.

"Here's the thing," Blaine starts. "I don't know for sure how Avox got out of the tank … or how she got across the kitchen floor without us noticing …"

Kurt's hands move down his face to his mouth, Blaine's explanation sending chills up his spine.

Well, _one_ pronoun in particular.

Kurt hopes it was a slip of the tongue, because seeing as neither Blaine nor his daughter are entomologically inclined, there's only one way Kurt can think of that Blaine could have determined that they've been mistaken about the gender of their house guest.

"Uh … did you say … _she_?"

"Y-yes?" Blaine says weakly.

"And … was that an error?"

"N-no."

"And how do we know Avox is a she? Mrs. Quincy told us that Avox was a _boy_."

"She had babies," Tracy answers, biting the bullet on her father's behalf.

"What?" Kurt shoots upright, sliding his chair across the floor to put distance between himself and the new mother. "When did _that_ happen?"

"I … I don't know. Tracy says her class got Avox a few months ago from the pet store, but scorpion gestation can last from 9 to 18 months."

Kurt looks at his husband with a raised brow, stunned at how he could rattle off that information so confidently and quickly.

"So says Google," Blaine adds. "We don't know when she gave birth, but her babies were on her back when we saw her."

"How many babies are we talking about?" Kurt asks, his throat going remarkably dry in an instant. Scorpions are arachnids like spiders, and a spider's egg sack can hold _hundreds_ of eggs. Kurt's shoulders tense at the thought of hundreds of baby scorpions scurrying about their house.

No, no, and _hell no_! Why couldn't Mrs. Quincy have gotten Tracy's class a _normal_ pet? Like a hamster or a guinea pig? Why did she have to get them a God dammed scorpion!? And why did Tracy have to sign up to watch the stupid thing over _Spring Break_!? School doesn't start again for three days! What are they going to do with baby scorpions for _three whole days_!?

"We don't know exactly," Tracy says, slowly stepping behind Blaine as the air in the room becomes strained. "But from what we read on the Internet … it could be a hundred."

Kurt blinks, then he nods, trying to remain calm for his daughter's sake as she confirms his fears. Hundred isn't hundred _s_ , but it's still nowhere within his comfort zone for eight-legged beasties. He looks over his shoulder at the Tupperware container taped to the wall. It seems stuck on there pretty good – no gaps or seams in the tape where the little guys can get out.

But he's not going over there to double-check.

"How long can they survive in there?"

"A few days. We made sure to put a misted paper towel in there with them before we sealed her in. To keep Avox and the babies moist."

"O-kay then …" Kurt glances over at the clock on the microwave. It's almost eight-thirty. That's right. Tracy and Blaine were supposed to take Kurt out for a big welcome home dinner. It feels so much later than eight-thirty though, and this may have killed his appetite "… this is what we're going to do. In the morning, we're going to call someone who knows about scorpions to come put her back in her tank. Until then, I'm going to the Waldorf Astoria. Anyone who doesn't want to spend the night with 101 scorpions is welcome to join me."

"And … if they get out of there before we get help?" Blaine asks.

"Then we move."

"Where?"

"I don't know. Any place that doesn't have scorpions."

"I don't think there are any scorpions in Alaska," Tracy says helpfully.

"Well, then, Alaska it is."


End file.
